So very, very cold . . .

Earlier this month, Amy at Savage Stories posted a blog showing her kids climbing into their fireplace. It reminded me to take this photo so that twenty years from now our girls will know why the fireplace stopped working due to neglect:

No fires in the Lim household this winter.

(Click on photo for larger view)

By the way, the girls woreare wearing their UCLA cheerleader outfits because: 1) We were on our way to watch the UCLA women's basketball team play Cal, but we never made it as far as Berkeley; and 2) These outfits will be way too small by next football season, so the girls are wearing them every chance they get!

Exhausted

Sometimes shopping can be exhausting . . .

Her first modelling job.

Imagine my surprise when I dropped the girls off at daycare today and saw this hanging prominently from the walls of the day care:

When we signed the girls up for daycare, we evidently signed a waiver allowing photos of the girls to be used for promoting the daycare, and any fundraising campaigns they promote.

It's pretty funny that they managed to get a usable photo of Caroline, because you are twice as likely to get a good photo of Katherine over Caroline. Caroline just does not like to take pictures.

Still, this poster is pretty cool, because I guess they are using this poster at all their daycare sites.

Being the Dad that I am, I thinking about asking to buy this poster so that I can put it in the garage of our house for posterity!

Nonconformist

This evening, Katherine and I were playing with one of those toys designed to teach children their shapes. It had little colored blocks, pyramids, and balls, and a container with corresponding holes in which the child is supposed to drop each particular shape.

Katherine, I must admit, has not yet shown much aptitude at being able to get the right shaped piece into the corresponding hole. Tonight was no different. She tried to put the pyramid into the square hole, and the block into the round hole, etc. She was getting pretty frustrated.

Finally, she picked up the container and scrutinized it. She played with the lid, popped off the top, then proceeded to place each piece neatly into the container, like so:

Does it really matter HOW the pieces get back in the container, as long as they do?

Katherine then placed the cover back on the container, and turned to me with a look that seemed to say, "Pretty clever, huh?"

Clever indeed. If infant behavior is an indicator of future ability, Katherine may not do so well on standardized tests, but no one will ever be able to tell me she can't solve problems!

Multimedia message

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Happy Chinese / Lunar New Year!

In honor of the Year of the Pig, our girls celebrated by honoring their culture.

Eating rice on Chinese New Year.

Here you see them at their table eating plain white rice. Never mind the fact that Mommy and Daddy made not one, but two different types of sauce to put on the rice. Nope, the girls like their rice naked.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Ikea the Playground

Before kids, I used to hate parents who would let their kids run around in a store, playing. Stores were for shopping, not entertaining your kids.

Now, however, with Caroline and Katherine, megastores like Ikea have all sorts of fun things for kids to do. Hence, this photo:

Alike, yet not alike.

Anyone who says twin personalities are alike doesn’t have twins.

Our girls are different in so many ways, you almost wouldn’t believe they are raised under the same roof by the same parents.

If you don’t believe me, you are invited to attend the annual drama in our house that occurs during bath time.

We give the girls their baths one at a time. They love taking baths, so we try to alternate who gets to go first each night. At least that is the theory.

When it’s Katherine’s turn to go first, we’ll tell her, “Want a bath?” Katherine will get all excited, and start to slowly move toward the bathroom. Emphasis on S-L-O-W-L-Y.

On her way to the bathroom, Katherine first has to find everyone in the house and say “Bye, bye!” to announce she is heading to her bath. Then she has to stop and give her stuffed animals a hug, because she won’t see them for about, oh, FIVE minutes.

While Katherine is slowly meandering towards the bathroom, Caroline will perk up, having heard the magical words, “Bath time”.

Caroline will wait until Katherine is near the bathroom door, still happily, and slowly strolling toward her bath. Just as Katherine reaches the bathroom door, Caroline will run toward the bathroom door, pass Katherine in the hallway, duck into the bathroom and close the door, leaving Katherine standing in the hallway facing a closed bathroom door, wondering, "What the hell just happened?".

Twins – alike, yet not alike.

Frighten Me Elmo

A tip for any parent who still has to occassionally sit out on the couch with their child in the middle of the night:

1) This "Elmo Sing and Teach Table" is prone to start playing spontaneously if the batteries are running low ("playing" means that Elmo's head begins to bob back and forth, while he sings a slow, blurry song due to the low batteries).

2) If you decide to watch television while your holding your child in the middle of the night in a dark, dark room, try not to watch, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose", especially sitting next to the "Elmo Sing and Teach Table" whose batteries are running low. Screaming at the top of your lungs while holding a sleeping baby is not conducive to keeping that baby asleep.

Watching this movie + Elmo starting to sing spontaneously = Frightened Daddy.

Fun and sun at the zoo.

Three days of rain in the Bay Area let up just in time for the girls to take a trip to the zoo with Daddy. Forgot to bring the real camera again, so here is a cell phone photo of us on top of the giant Tortoise:

YAY!! for the Electrician!

I wrote some time back about Caroline's fascination with plummers. The fascination, it turns out, extends to electricians.

We had an electrician in the house this morning to do some upgrades to our house. I stayed home with the girls for a few hours so that he could do the job.

The twins were fascinated with him. For one, he had a big tool belt with all sorts of neat, shiny objects. Second, he was working behind an electrial outlet that is forbidden territory for the girls. So for much of the morning they stood close by and watched his every move.

The electrician was having a tough time "fishing" wire from behind one of the walls, and spent a good hour trying to "fish" the wire out from behind the wall. After much grumbling, he finally managed to snag the wire and pull it up into position, and which point he exclaimed, "Got it!"

To which the girls replied, in unison, "YAY!" and began clapping their hands for him.

The electrician actually stopped work, turned to the girls, and gave a bow.

This aint' necessarily what you're lookin' for . . .

Some interesting people find their way onto this blogsite.

When I first launched this blog back in 2005, some more experienced bloggers told me about Statscounter.com. It's a website that gives you a free counter on your blogsite (if you look at the bottom of this page, you can see the counter, currently hovering in the 13,000's, thank you very much Grandma and Grandpa!).

However, statscounter.com does more than just give you a counter. It lets you track visitor activity, so that you can see where in the world people are coming from. You can also see how a person entered your site, and what originally brought them to your site. Sarah, for example, once wrote an entry on how people found her website through all sorts of strange keyword searches on Google.

Every now and then, I'll check statscounter.com, just to see where people are coming from, and how they find this blogsite.

Imagine my amusement this evening when I noticed a visitor from Brazil, who found this site after doing a Google search for images of . . . . "Elvis and Twins".

What the &*#!%*&!! is a person doing looking for images of Elvis with twins? I can tell you they probably didn't expect to find this page.

What was really interesting about my lurker from Brazil is that he/she didn't just leave the site immediately (statscounter.com will tell you how long a person stays on your site). Not having found "Elvis and twins", my Brazilian visitor nonetheless spent 1 minute, 22 seconds on the site, reading about Katherine's crazy hair. Or maybe the person didn't speak English, and was trying to figure out why Google was so screwed up as to send him/her to a baby twin site, for God's sake!

Pretending to Be Angry, But Looking for An Agent

As a Dad, discipline and athletic ability walk a fine line.

We've been trying to cut down on the amount of food-throwing that occurrs at meals. When the girls start to get full, they start to toss their food all over the place. Not so bad at home, but horrible in restaurants.

Yesterday, as the girls were eating chicken nuggets, Katherine raised a nugget in her little hand and tossed it over the table towards Caroline -- about 3 feet.

Caroline, neat as you pleased, picked the nugget up and tossed it back over the table to Katherine.

What I said was, "NO. No throwing food. Put it down!"

What I thought was, "WOW, my girls can throw really straight. Maybe I ought to start teaching them how to catch . . . "